Gun Control Background Check List

Articles this morning from CBS News, the Chicago Tribune and Washington Post on the Justice Department’s list of mentally impaired individuals barred from purchasing handguns notes that list’s “explosion,” notably from the California where some 200,000 additional names were added since last Spring’s shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.

Federal law has prohibited the sale of guns to people judged to be “mentally defective,” the Washington Post article says, “ but enforcement has been haphazard.” In 1995, the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Lopez ruled that a law making it a federal crime to possess a firearm in a school zone intruded on the rights of a state because it didn’t fall with the government’s power “to regulate commerce between the several states.” Two years later, Printz v. U.S. found that the 1994 Brady Act’s waiting period while background checks were performed for the purchase of handguns was likewise unconstitutional because it required state law enforcement officials to participate in carrying out a federal mandate.

Currently, these articles relate, 32 of the states submit names to the database, but the federal government cannot require the participation of the remaining 18 (Here)